Whose We Are

"Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him because we shall see Him as He is."                                                                                                                                                       1 John 3:2

In the mid 1940s following the Second World War and the horrors that came out it, in particular the Holocaust, the world was in a state of moral shock. In fact, it still is to some degree. Millions were killed in combat or were systematically murdered on such a grand scale that the world is still reeling from it today. In 1947, the United Nations was created to try and maintain world peace and for a season, large scale ethnic conflict has been suppressed.  

Also in 1947 the Cold War began between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It was so called because of the frigid relations between the superpowers which included the nuclear arms race, espionage and intense psychological warfare. This ended in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union and very soon after, a bunch of new countries suddenly appeared on the map. Nations that were under Russian control suddenly weren't as eastern world communism disintegrated. This new found freedom brought back to life ethnic identities and, sadly, old ethnic rivalries. During the 1990s, the term "ethnic cleansing" was introduced. There was the conflict in Bosnia and Rwanda where certain ethnic groups sought to exterminate other ethnic groups.

The dysfunction between the world's people groups exists on many different levels and today the term "identity politics" is very common. Identity is hugely important to us as human beings. In his 1994 book Blood and Belonging, former Liberal Party of Canada leader Michael Ignatieff wrote, "To belong is to understand the tacit codes of the people you live with; it is to know that you will be understood without having to explain yourself."

In recent years, the search for identity and meaning has gone off in many different and wild directions...and it's become intensely personal. Since social media has taken over the world these last 20 years, we've entered the age of the avatar. By definition, an avatar is "a graphical or electronic representation of a person on social media". The social media that is available today gives you the opportunity to show the world what you want to be, not necessarily who you actually are. It's a very narcissistic, or self-loving, age. It's nothing new, really. People have been inventing and inflating their identities for generations.

Some of you know the story of the 1960s Canadian folk singer Buffy Ste. Marie.

Buffy was born on the Piapot Cree Nation reserve in Saskatchewan and was taken from her family at the age of two or three under a Canadian government program known as "The Sixties Scoop" and given to a non-indigenous family in Massachusetts where she was raised. She was a very talented singer and it wasn't long before she began to make a name for herself on the music scene. She never forgot her roots, though. The more famous she got, the more she included her Canadian indigenous identity in her performances and music marketing, unashamed to wear Cree Nation clothing everywhere. This was her identity and it served her well.

During her career, she received many musical accolades including an Academy Award for co-writing the song "Up Where We Belong" (she's a gifted songwriter). In 1995, she was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. In 2008, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards. She was given the Governor General's Award for Performing Arts in 2010. In 2018, she won a Juno Award for Indigenous Album of the Year. In addition to all that, she was awarded 15 honorary doctorates from Canadian universities, was a recipient of the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal and later the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal and she was a Companion of the Order of Canada, the most prestigious level of that Order. She was even on a Canadian postage stamp.

And then it all came undone. In 2023, the CBC investigative show The Fifth Estate exposed her as a fraud. She was a great singer, to be sure. However, she wasn't taken from her Saskatchewan family as a toddler and raised by an American family. She wasn't born in Canada at all. She was born in Stoneham, Massachusetts in 1941 and was raised by her natural biological family in Wakefield, Mass. So...she wasn't Canadian and nor was she Indigenous. She is Italian. She lied about it all. All the Canadian awards and medals she was given over the years were revoked just this year.   

When she was confronted with the truth, here is how she defended herself. She said, "Discrepancies are something that I've lived with since I was very little. I learned early on that what was 'absolutely true' was not necessarily true for me. Think of the creative process of songwriting. On Tuesday, the song doesn't exist. You cannot prove that it exists. But on Wednesday, all of a sudden, something exists that didn't exist yesterday. A lot of things that have happened to me are not true on Tuesday, but by Wednesday, the world is different." 

What is truth? That is what Pontius Pilate asked Jesus. What is truth? Is truth what you and I say it is? Is truth what the government says it is? Is it cultural construct? Does truth even matter?

Ask yourself, "Who am I?" What is your true identity? Do we create our own truth about life - how things are and who we are? Are you your own invention or were you created by another? Do we manufacture ourselves or do we discover ourselves? Sure, part of who we are has to do with our environment, our upbringing and our choices in life, but they aren't the only things that define us.

When I was a kid I had the same teacher for both grades four and five. For two school years I had the same teacher in the same classroom and maybe I even sat in the same desk. For grades four and five, I saw this inscription above the blackboard, "I am a person of worth created in the image of God to relate and to live." And I would add to that quote, "To reflect His glory." I never forgot that and I internalized it. It was not always top of mind through my years of growing up but still, I never forgot it. A couple of years ago I wondered if my teacher was quoting someone or if it was an original from her. So I googled it and found out that it came from a book called Being Me by Grady Nutt, a Baptist minister who sometimes starred on the 1970s-80s TV show called Hee-Haw. The whole book Being Me is an explanation of that quote. It is loaded with anecdotes about life with references to famous people and Bible stories but above all, it's about who we are in God, in Christ.

While I believe that identity is hugely important, the question of "Who am I?" is not as important as "Whose am I?" As human beings we have volition, intuition, reason and a conscience. We live by choice, not by instinct like all the other animals. This is because that is what God is like and we are like Him, made in His image. I believe that if we can settle the question of our identity on the fact that we are God's children, first and foremost, the recognition of who we are will come to us in due course. But the best we will get in this life is just a glimpse of what's in store for us in Heaven.

There's a great passage in Revelation chapter 2 where Jesus is describing the church in the city of Pergamum. He referred to Pergamum as the place "where Satan's throne is". He applauded the faithful in Pergamum for holding fast to the faith but He also mentioned some of the sins they were tolerating and called on them to repent. And then Jesus said something interesting: Revelation 2:17, "To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it."

Further study on these verses tells me that the white stone can signify a lot of things. It means acquittal, i.e. legally not guilty of sin and thus free from the power and very presence of sin. It means purity, victory and acceptance by the very God of the universe. Your new name will define perfectly and completely who you truly are in Christ. Right now your life is hidden with Christ in God but later it will be revealed to you. You will know yourself as God knows you and meant you to be.

There will be no more lies or avatars about who we are, no more doubts, no false negative or grandiose self images, no nagging insecurities or besetting fears. No sickness - physical or otherwise - only perfection, only completeness in all ways in Christ. And we will know our true purpose and our proper place in God's kingdom and we will know exactly why we were created, which is to reflect His glory.

That is our inheritance...and it all starts now with trusting Jesus alone for our salvation as our Lord and Savior. And what have we done by trusting Jesus? According the classic book by Phillip Keller, A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23, "A person exchanges the fickle fortunes of living life by sheer whimsy for the more productive and satisfying adventure of being guided by God."

1 Peter 1:18-19 says we were not redeemed with corruptible things like silver and gold but with the precious blood of Christ. As sinners, we are unworthy of salvation but 'unworthy' doesn't mean 'worthless'. God places great worth on us or He wouldn't have willed that His only begotten Son should die for us. When we understand that God values us more than we know, we can truly know that we are people of worth.                                                        

Canada Then and Now

                     "The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idealized past"

                                                 Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist, journalist and playwright, native son of Thamesville, Ontario

Given the events of the past six months, namely the re-election of Donald Trump as U.S. president and the phoenix-like resurgence of the Liberal Party of Canada, this particular Canada Day is a unique one. This year our flag-waving will be a little more impassioned because of the looming socio-economic threat we as Canadians are facing vis-a-vis the Trump Administration. 

On January 7, during the apparent winter of his discontent with northern geopolitics, Trump said he wanted to annex Canada through economic force and do the same with Greenland for military security. Since then Canada has new leadership with Mark Carney as Prime Minister and a governing Liberal Party that does not at all resemble what it was a mere six months ago. Here is what I mean. The government just passed Bill C-5. Most Canadians barely noticed because their government is still in honeymoon mode but the Indigenous peoples noticed as did the environmentalists and some others. Bill C-5, now the law of the land, empowers the government to leap over any existing law standing in the way of a project it wants done. For instance, if environmental and Indigenous laws are in the way of building a pipeline, too bad. These laws, many of them created by the last batch of Liberals, will be trumped by Bill C-5, created by this new batch of Liberals. Regardless of the opposition parties' views on this, most revealing was what Toronto Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith recently said of his own government's policy, "This bill would make even [Stephen] Harper blush. Liberals would rightly scream...if a federal Conservative government attempted the same." Serious Liberal voters must be aghast. For the record, the federal Conservatives supported the government in passing this legislation. This law is a federal version of the Ontario PC government's Bill 5 which also recently became law.

We can shake our heads at this and curse our politicians for their perceived heartlessness but the reality is, they don't have much of a choice. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has to deal with the Great Lakes states. Mark Carney has to deal with Donald Trump and his penchant for slapping tariffs on everything. Just last Friday, Canada said it would impose a retroactive digital services tax on American high tech firms. Trump was furious and the Americans walked away from trade negotiations. By this past Sunday, Carney rescinded this tax and everyone is back at the negotiating table. Trump's comments on this? "We hold all the cards." With utter glee, White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, announced to reporters that, "Canada caved to President Trump and the United States of America!" Carney wants a trade deal with the U.S. in place by July 21, just three weeks from now. There is no telling what else we'll have to "cave" on to achieve that goal. 

It's not all bad news, though. Not by a long shot. Geography has conjoined Canada with the United States and we could have had far worse neighbours. The Ukrainians got Russia. Taiwan is constantly under threat from China. Israel is surrounded by countries that want to wipe the Jewish state from the face of the earth. Canada and the U.S. are more than just neighbours. We share a common language and a similar culture and, for the most part, our citizenries like each other. Our friends and relatives often straddle the border. There are Canadians in American government positions and vice-versa. I could go on but all that to say we share more than just a land mass. And Canada needs the U.S. We need their protection militarily from some covetous nations and we need their business to make our economy vibrant. Justin Trudeau admitted as much to Donald Trump in the waning days of his leadership. Canada has a Catch-22 existence. We feel threatened by the American vortex but without it, there is no Canada. The one-time leader of the federal Social Credit Party, Robert Thompson, once joked, "The Americans are our best friends whether we like it or not". The challenge for the Carney government is to negotiate a new relationship with our best friends while feeling the strain of being their best friends.